Sakemochida Honten Storehouse

A Storehouse Built Out Over a Canal

The Sakemochida Honten Storehouse (酒持田本店土蔵, also written Sakemochida Honten Dozō) is an earthen-walled storehouse at Katahara-chō, Hirata-chō, in Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture, built in the late Meiji period between 1898 and 1912 and entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 29 March 2019.

It belongs to Sakemochida Honten, a sake brewery founded in 1877 that still produces the Yamasan Masamune label. Of the five brewery buildings on the national register, this one is by far the smallest. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a building area of 31 square metres, roughly the floor space of a studio apartment. What the plan gives up, the section takes back: two storeys stand above ground and a basement is dug beneath.

From the street the building reads as a white box. Lime plaster covers the walls, banded near the top by three raised horizontal courses known as hachimaki. Across the lower part of the front runs namako-kabe, square dark tiles set in a diamond grid with plaster raised in fat ridges along every joint. The ridges throw shadows that shift through the day, which is the point of the technique as much as the waterproofing is.

The roof is gabled and laid with sangawara pantiles, and the doorway sits in the gable end rather than under the eaves, an arrangement called tsumairi. A lean-to roof, the geya, projects across the façade to shelter that entrance.

The side worth understanding is the one the street hides. Behind the storehouse runs the Hirata Funagawa, the canal that once carried freight down to Lake Shinji. The rear wall does not simply stop at the bank. It is carried outward on a bracketed substructure that the registration file likens to kake-zukuri, the technique used for temple halls that project from steep hillsides, and the basement occupies the space beneath. Both upper floors are boarded rather than laid with earth.

Why the Building Is Registered

Japan protects historic buildings at several levels, and the distinctions matter. A National Treasure (国宝) or an Important Cultural Property (重要文化財) is designated, which brings strict controls on any alteration. A Registered Tangible Cultural Property (登録有形文化財), the category this storehouse falls into, is registered under a lighter scheme introduced in 1996 for buildings roughly fifty years old or more. Registration asks the owner to notify the authorities before making significant changes, and in exchange the building can go on being used, adapted and lived in. For a working brewery in a town where old buildings must earn their keep, that flexibility is the whole reason the system exists.

The storehouse was registered under the criterion covering structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Its registration number is 32-197, granted in the 92nd round of registrations. The Agency's file describes it plainly as forming part of the historic scenery of a merchant town.

The Sakemochida holdings reached the register in two stages. The shop-and-main-house, the old brewing storehouse and the inspection house were registered on 28 June 2017. The mukō-zashiki reception wing and this storehouse followed on 29 March 2019. Taken together the five trace a single business across roughly six decades of building: an 1877 townhouse, a Taisho-era inspection house with clapboard walls and an arched entrance canopy, and this compact storehouse squeezed onto the canal bank.

One point deserves care. Several tourism sources describe the building as early Shōwa work, that is, the late 1920s or 1930s. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the late Meiji period, 1898 to 1912, with repairs carried out in 1972. The Agency's record is the primary source and the dating used throughout this article, but visitors reading local material may encounter the later date.

Seeing It, and Sleeping Inside It

The storehouse stands on Momen Kaidō, the "Cotton Road", the preserved commercial street that gives Hirata its character. Hirata grew as a market town on a waterway running from the western shore of Lake Shinji, and by the late Edo period it was the collection point for Unshū cotton. Records put trade at the cotton market at around 220,000 tan a year toward the end of the period, close to forty per cent of what the Matsue domain sold beyond its own borders, most of it shipped out by boat.

Roughly thirty townhouses survive along the L-shaped route through the Shinmachi, Katahara-chō and Miyanomachi districts. Look for the local grammar as you walk: gable-entry houses with plastered walls, more namako-kabe, and Izumo lattice, a window screen alternating two long bars with two short ones. The brewery's tall chimney, marked with its Yamasan crest, is the easiest landmark on the street.

The storehouse itself is not a museum, and there is no ticket window. What there is instead is unusual: since its conversion it operates as RITA Izumo Hirata Sakemochida Kura, a whole-building guest lodging let to one party at a time. The three levels total about 48 square metres, with a living room at ground level, a bedroom above and a small tatami platform in the basement, and the interior beams and side walls use local pine. Guests can draw a bath infused with a sake preparation made from the brewery's own product. Rates for two people have been listed from roughly 32,000 yen, and booking runs through the operator.

If you would rather see the brewery at work, the family runs a guided tour from the main premises at 785 Hirata-chō, a short walk across the street. It lasts about sixty minutes, costs 3,500 yen per person, takes two to ten people, and starts at 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00. The fifth-generation owner often leads it, and it ends with a tasting of three sakes. Reservations go through the Momen Kaidō activity booking site rather than by walking in. What you see changes with the season, since brewing itself runs through winter.

Photography of the exterior from the public street is unrestricted. Interior photography is a matter for whoever is hosting you at the time. Getting there is straightforward: Unshū Hirata Station on the Ichibata Electric Railway is about ten minutes on foot, Izumo Enmusubi Airport about fifteen minutes by car, and the Shinji interchange on the San'in Expressway about twenty.